Addicted to dating sites

(I’m happier eating lots of carrot cake and letting my hair fade).

He treated his medical treatment like taking on a co-worker’s job after downsizing. But I learned a lot from my online dating adventure.‘I’ve met some lovely men, but I’ve also met many who lied about themselves and their intentions.’Her experiences are mirrored by many women, who find that internet dating is great if you want a casual fling, but not for anything longer lasting because there are so many dishonest men seeking cheap thrills.Today, nine million Britons will log on to look for love.But it was all because I couldn’t deal with being alone after the death of my husband. The guys writing to me were also online, so they'd often answer really quickly, until I was having multiple flirty conversations. Since I’d never really dated in my formative years, my dates often seemed surreal. And if I did, I would probably be too sleep-deprived to recognize him.In 1970, I met my future husband, George Albert Hansen, at a pool party at his parents' house in Walnut Creek, CA. I was super stressed out by all the classes and exams, but George calmed me down. Like I was watching someone else interacting with these guys, saying clever things, nodding empathetically. But if I couldn’t sleep, I could always swipe right or left on Tinder. I was having adventures and figuring out public transit.So, I called George, then a senior majoring in engineering at Cal Berkeley, although he said he was majoring in pinball. We cooked (OK, George cooked), did projects around the house, and acted like boring suburbanites. I joined the Rotary Club, the local synagogue, a car club and a couple networking groups even though I had nothing to sell. I started on J-Date, the self-proclaimed premier Jewish dating site. When I couldn’t sleep, I fell into the abyss of the OK Cupid Question Mill, which claims to match people by their answers. Hypnotized by the changing screens, I’d check off one box. Do I want a relationship for one night, months, years or a lifetime? At night, if I wasn’t out, I was usually texting with a couple guys and/or having one or two pre-meet-up phone calls. And I realized I would still be spending my holidays alone.

He accepted the prom invite, purchasing a vintage tuxedo jacket and driving us to the San Francisco Galleria in his Dad's Buick One day, George and I were sitting close together on the white leather sofa in my Dad’s living room. There was a rain storm and George put his head on my shoulder. ” When I said I wasn't, he said, “Then how am I going to kiss you? George was either coding software or he was working on his outrageous home theater system. Apparently, there weren’t too many local, single Jews, so I moved on to Ok Cupid. I went offline on and off for awhile before fully abandoning my dating sites.

His mother and my father worked together as physicists at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. George was 11 with curly dark hair, brown eyes and a serious manner as he politely showed me his model train set. He’d drive up almost every Wednesday from Santa Clara, where he worked as a software engineer, just to have dinner with me. A gifted test taker, he coached me through the bar exam. We spent all our time together to the exclusion of others. Especially at night, when everybody else was home with their families. My life became a sick experiment in performance art dating. I was “getting out there,” the generic advice foisted upon the bereaved by those who do not want to spend time with them. Last November, I was dating four guys at once: a cowboy, a lawyer, a Tai chi instructor and an architect, plus I was still online.

Over the years, George and I saw each other at family parties. In 1981, when I was a 17-year-old nerd, I needed a date for my senior prom. We were both introverted, anti-social, only children. People kept telling me to “get out there,” so I did. Kind of like going crazy at an outlet designer shoe store even if you don’t know what kind of shoes you want. I'd talk to, and meet anyone who sounded nice and/or cool and was willing to meet within a 15-mile radius of my house in daytime at a public place. It was all starting to feel pretty pointless, however. I was too busy staying online all day because I liked receiving compliments from men I’d never meet. When I was trying to my juggle dates for the week, I got so frustrated I threw my cell phone at the wall.

In the real world, a person is a package and you might not notice their eye colour, but online you cross off people for the most base physical reasons.

You become judgmental.’Professor Harry Reis, who led the research into the efficacy of internet dating, said that skimming over the profiles and pictures of hundreds of potential mates encouraged a ‘shopping’ mentality.

We were together for for 32 years until he died of cancer on April 13, 2013. He’d lasted much longer than his doctors had predicted. Like how to avoid wasting time on connections that aren’t going to happen.